The BBC's 100% Crime Masterpiece Deserves Credit For Its "Unthinkable" Ending

Published Sep 30, 2026, 10:30 PM EDT Faith Roswell is a Senior Writer on Screen Rant's Classic TV team. Since earning her degree in Creative Writing over a decade ago, Faith has written articles on film and TV from a variety of different angles. Faith now combines her knowledge of psychology with her love of monster movies to give more insight into what makes the best ones. You may have read her Screen Rant lists and features covering horror, sci-fi, and fantasy, or read her Amazon Top 10 book, "Movie Monsters of the Deep." Faith has had an extensive career as a writer, appearing on BBC live radio, researching true crime for Rotten Mango podcast, and writing for publications including Mental Floss, Atlas Obscura, and The Daily Jaws before beginning here at Screen Rant. This article mentions a plotline that could be interpreted as suicide. Of all the overlooked British crime dramas, one became a stealth success, sparking multiple international remakes and spinoffs, yet it has largely been forgotten today despite including an unparalleled soundtrack and one of the most shocking endings of all time. Planned reboots and wrap-up series have been canceled, and as the series never achieved the same notoriety as iconic TV shows like The Sopranos, this has left its impact to fade further. The BBC's two-part crime drama Life on Mars is criminally underrated, combining a police procedural format with sci-fi elements, and mastering ambiguity before it became a common practice. Life on Mars follows police officer Sam Tyler who wakes up after a car crash to find himself in 1973, still working for the police, but under very different circumstances. The series is often considered to be a forgotten time travel show while keeping the exact nature of Sam's circumstances a mystery. Had Life on Mars been a longer series, it could have attracted the same fan theory culture as Lost, but the fact that it only lasted for two seasons worked against it, despite being a perfect and compact series with an ending that is just as mindblowing today. Life On Mars Has Us Cheering For The Unthinkable Sam initially tried to jump from a building, believing that this would take him back to 2006. After being saved by Annie, he spends two seasons hearing events in 2006 through his radio in 1973, and when he finally returns to his life in 2006, he discovers that his new reality is very different from the world he left. This results in a wordless scene with Sam standing on top of his work building while David Bowie's "Life On Mars" plays, before he breaks into a smile and sprints for the edge of the rooftop, this time jumping successfully. While Sam is immediately reunited with his friends and colleagues in 1973, and finally gets the kiss with Annie that viewers have been waiting for after a series-long "will-they won't-they" storyline, the previous scene puts the viewer in an arguably unprecedented position. It sounds unthinkable that a TV series would have its audience cheering for an apparent suicide, but this is what Life on Mars does, and yet makes the scene into a triumphant ending. The show pushes boundaries even further, with Sam then hearing attempts to resuscitate him over the radio and changing the channel to Bowie. Some devastating TV endings actually work, and Life on Mars manages the seemingly-impossible, presenting the potential end to Sam's life as a new beginning in a different one. The final scene in which the child who appears to represent Death turns the camera off adds a "meta" layer that was extremely uncommon when Life on Mars was made, setting the show far ahead of its time. While the sequel series, Ashes to Ashes, explains many of the initial mysteries, this was not necessary and Life on Mars would have worked just as well with the ambiguity left intact. Life On Mars Mastered Ambiguity Before Many Other Mind-Bending TV Shows Image via Netflix Creator Matthew Graham told Life of Wylie that he was surprised some viewers considered Sam's status a mystery as he had intended it to be clear that he was in a coma. Still, the writers then leaned into the sense of the unknown through hidden details, even resulting in the main actors having differing opinions. The article reports that John Simm (Sam) believes that his character might not have returned to the present day at all. While Sam's file in Ashes to Ashes lists his death as a suicide, even the sequel brings its own mysteries to the table. Life on Mars contains Easter eggs like repeated numbers and hints within song lyrics, and later TV shows have later made great use of this strategy to great effect. Breaking Bad's hidden details have provided fuel for audience discussions for over a decade, and while mind-bending TV shows like Twin Peaks and Lost were already huge hits when Life on Mars aired, the mystery-box-style storytelling was still not commonplace. Life on Mars has been remade in the US, Spain, Russia, the Czech Republic, and South Korea. Without necessarily being directly influenced by Life on Mars, later series like Russian Doll still owe a lot to the show, which Rotten Tomatoes has crowned the best crime series of all time. With its 100% perfect critics' score and 98% positive audience rating, Life on Mars even outranks The Sopranos, which has a similarly ambiguous, if much more frustrating ending. The series might have been unfairly forgotten, but it is still a must-watch show occupying a unique position in crime, sci-fi, and storytelling. Source: Life of Wylie Life on Mars Release Date 2006 - 2007-00-00 Network OCN Cast philip glenister Han Tae-Joo